Women’s basketball has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years, though the players in the WNBA do not make anywhere near the amount of money that male players in the NBA do. It is disturbing that racism is raising its ugly head in the game as so-called fans yell racist abuse at players.

Indiana Fever’s defeat to the Connecticut Sun in the WNBA playoffs was marred as representatives from both teams, as well as the league, stepped in to condemn racist abuse around the game.

Fever star Caitlin Clark has become one of the most high-profile sports stars in the United States during her rookie season. That has led to a significant amount of racist, sexist and homophobic comments online from people purporting to defend Clark, who is white, in a league where the majority of players are Black and many are gay.

During Wednesday’s game, which Connecticut won 87-81 in their home arena to seal a 2-0 series victory, there were reports of racist abuse from some in the crowd. Some of the Sun’s players have also been the subject of abuse online. Clark was left with a black eye in Game 1 of the series after a foul by DiJonai Carrington. Both players say the injury was unintentional. Before Wednesday’s game Carrington shared on social media an email she received which called her a racist slur before the sender said they hope someone “rapes you and cuts your head off.”

The racism seems to have intensified after Clark, an exceptionally talented player, entered the WNBA this year after a very successful college career. She is white and some people seemed to think that she was being targeted by other players and discriminated against because she is white. This intensified when she was left off the roster for the summer Olympics, although there were good reasons for it. Right wing politicians seized on this.

After Clark was left off the USA women’s basketball Olympic team earlier this month, I raised an eyebrow myself. She’s a phenomenal player and athlete and someone who should hold the lion’s share of the credit for the WNBA’s massive increase in popularity. But, as is often the case in sports discourse, multiple things can be true at once. Clark is also an inexperienced rookie, who, aside from a few standout performances (including Sunday’s win over the Chicago Sky), has had a rocky start to her WNBA career – she leads the league in turnovers per game. And when it comes to adding her to the Olympic roster, the US selection committee would have had to alter the roles of skilled guards like Diana Taurasi and Sabrina Ionescu.

Sure, some level of head-scratching was justified. But when you look at the full picture, it’s clear why Clark was left off the Olympic roster, and any further uproar about the situation is a waste of breath. Unfortunately though, we live in a political culture that loves to waste breath.

Politicians, pundits, and fans from across the right decried the decision. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley took to X, as did the official account for the House Judiciary GOP, further inflaming a conversation around Clark that was already chaotic. ESPN’s Pat McAfee even invoked Clark’s race when he argued that she deserved more credit than the rest of the WNBA’s (mostly Black) rookie class for helping to popularize the sport.
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But the striking thing about the strife around Caitlin Clark is that she has done nothing to provoke the controversy herself. An inherently uncontroversial figure, Clark is the personification of far-right pundit Laura Ingraham’s infamous “shut up and dribble” sentiment, which echoes a long-standing belief on the right that athletes – or the ones they disagree with anyway – should leave politics out of sports. And yet, it is those very same people who are attempting to draw Clark away from neutrality. Indiana congressman Jim Banks, for example, sent a letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert asking her to discipline Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter for knocking Clark down during a game earlier this month. Like Reese’s hit on Sunday, it was a hard foul, but the idea that it needed to be escalated by an elected official is just as ridiculous as when Louisiana governor Jeff Landry proposed stripping the scholarships of LSU women’s basketball players who were not present during the national anthem at the start of one of their games. As LSU coach Kim Mulkey explained, the players only happened to miss the anthem because of a pre-game routine, but no explanation will ever be good enough for conservatives who weaponize innocuous events to make a name for themselves. Republicans are experts at opposition because it’s kind of the point of their party: to conserve or even regress on the issues that matter most to Americans. Without a sense of progress, they have resorted to self-serving stances that are increasingly desperate.

Right wingers often claim that Black people see racism when it is not there, that they love to wallow in victimhood. But ss we see in this case, it is they who are ‘playing the race card’ (as they like to say) so that they can get publicity.